Alabama reaches $12.2 million settlement with Roblox
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WAKA) – Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall announced Tuesday that the state has reached a $12.2 million settlement with Roblox.
Roblox is a popular online platform that has over 151 million users and offers people ways to program and play games created by themselves and others. The news comes as the social gaming platform finds itself in legal trouble over child safety issues, including child predators.
Under the settlement terms, Alabama will receive the money to be put into the Attorney General’s Safe School Initiative, so it can be used for funding school resource officers across the state.
As a part of the agreement with Roblox, all users must undergo age verification to ensure children have access only to age-appropriate content on the platform. The settlement also explicitly addresses privacy concerns related to age verification.
Parents will also have expanded control over their children’s use of the platform under the agreement. The expansion of parental controls allows parents to decide who their children are talking to and the games they are playing on the platform as well as restrict the transfer of in-game currency from adults other than trusted connections. In the absence of a parent account, the default content mode provides protections to minor users.
Adult users and users under 16 will not be able to chat unless they are identified as a “trusted friend” on the platform. Trusted friends for users under 13 require parental consent. Unless a parent elects otherwise, users between 13 and 15 years old may add trusted friends through a QR code or phone contact importer.
Under the agreement, Roblox will not allow communication involving minors to be encrypted. Unencrypted communication allows law enforcement to be able to more easily combat child exploitation networks, trafficking, and the distribution of illegal and harmful content.
